Viruses Have a Secret, Altruistic Social Life
From a social behavior standpoint, as Sanjuán and his colleagues pointed out in their paper, the wild-type VSV’s suppression of interferon qualifies as an altruistic act because in effect the wild type sacrifices itself for the cheater. Because both the virus and the host’s interferon response spread out from cell to cell, it’s actually quite difficult to avoid the emergence of spatial structures during infection. Another aspect of social evolution of viruses that Sanjuán is investigating is why multiple viral particles sometimes gather and infect a cell together.
Source: www.quantamagazine.org